Re: Feedback

I'm pretty sure he was mildly joking however I do agree that the only rational choice is to save the mother unless there are special circunstances

Sure, sure, it's just a 24th trimester abortion, after all.

If you have provable rational arguments that contradict that proposition you are more than welcome to post them, I would love to read them. If you prefer to use the abortion debate, I also welcome provable rational arguments on whichever side you like as well as solutions if you like.

Re: Feedback

So, what's the rational reason for saving the mother instead of the child?

A full explanation would require some math and would be fairly long so I'll simplify it by sayingI have an excellent proof of this that is too long to fit into this post, but I'll say that a child is a long term/high risk investment and an adult is in most cases the opposite of that, a safe bet and the reward for a child in relation to the adult is not guaranteed to be better (by reward I mean the net benefit of that person in society at large).

FLFPTFY. Well, even with your math, I'm sure it comes down to what you value more, and that's a starting assumption, so we're just talking past each other now. And I can assure you that the reward on the investment in the child is not entirely long term.

serguey123:

boomzilla:

Since both the father and the mother generally hold the child's well being above their own

Do you have statistical proof of this? Again, this flies against the basic instinct of self preservation so I highly doubt that is true.

I can't imagine what statistical proof for or against could possibly be. A lot of things fly against the basic instinct of self preservation. Just look at any blakeyrant. That sort of rage in anyone can't be good for your health.

serguey123:

boomzilla:

horrible human beings.

?? This baffles me a lot, I have never heard of an actual horrible human being, unless you mean ugly and that is of course subjected to cultural and race differences

I'm a person. I judge things. And people. That's my judgment (which should have been obvious). I don't apologize for thinking that some cultures / civilizations / behaviors are superior to others. If you are the sort of person that does enough things that I judge horrible, then you probably earn an "horrible human being" rating. I can't explain your inability to do so.

Re: Feedback

I would call it playing devil's advocate but you are free to call it whatever you want

TGV:

Nothing as explosive as a moral issue

This is where we disagree, I don't see it as a moral issue, more to the point, morality is something that changes to reflect society so whatever we consider the moral choice winner today was not so yesterday and would not be the same tomorrow.

TGV:

hand waiving

I do not see how waving a hand or any part of my body would help, unless the audience had the mental maturity of a toddler, which I guess is a fairly accurate description how most people think of the average YouTube commenter but I though we were more exclusive than that.

TGV:

Let them defend themselves for saving the child.

I merely would like to hear the rationale behind it.

TGV:

You say maths, and everyone overlooks the load of assumptions that have to be made to turn a problem like this into math.

I just consider forum posting not the best medium for actual meaningful discourse, so I use shortcuts instead of boring the audience, you are more than welcome to study math and anthropology to see if we arrive at the same conclusion, again if you possess interesting insight into it I would love to read about it

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Taken from a solely and coldly rational standpoint, the purpose of being a parent is to propagate one's genes. One does so more successfully by surviving (and one's mate's surviving) to support any existing children and create more children, than by sacrificing one's life to save a single offspring that is likely too young to survive on its own. That is, if one is still young and healthy enough to procreate and support children. That equation changes if one has aged past the point of fertility or the ability to contribute significantly to the feeding and care of the offspring.

I disagree. The mother would be a basket case and never forgive you or herself, making your life miserable. So you'd have to ditch her (or slowly get mental yourself), as well as finding a new mate to make a new kid. That's one hell of a job. Unless you live in a world where the only time you see your wife is when you rape her to get a son. But even then, the new kid would get pretty broken for having a fruitcake mother.

Cassidy: Perhaps "Coders just don't like writing docs" is more accurate.

dhromed: That translates to "Codemonkeys are stupid, narrow-minded fuckwits who willfully deny the bigger picture even though it is all around them slapping them in the face on a near-constant basis." I'm glad I'm not one of those people.

That is an interesting article, thanks, it is refreshing to read something that is not being purposely inflammatory. I think that we should focus more as a society on preventing situations that might require an abortion because it is a no win situation most of the time wheter the pregnancy is carried to term or interrupted

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

The mother would be a basket case and never forgive you or herself, making your life miserable.

Do you have proof of that? "Time heals all wounds" Although I'm not very fond of proverbs this one is consistent with the physiology of the human brain. One could always contest this with anecdotal evidence on how outliers on any sample population are less likely to respond to this or suffer from some form of PTSD or survivor guilt, but this of course does not prove your point and the child would not be free of mental scarring so that renders most of the argument moot, leaving only the posibility of quantifyng mental scarring or positing that a child's brain is more plastic and yet unformed so it should be more resilient however I consider this an exercise in futility as this line of reasoning doesn't ammount to much in the end.

arh:

Unless you live in a world where the only time you see your wife is when you rape her to get a son. But even then, the new kid would get pretty broken for having a fruitcake mother.

Not true, simply because if such a world existed and this was common occurence then your child would not deviate from the norm and should become a functional adult. Remember that normalcy is a relative thing and it changes all the time.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

If this was a real world situation instead, yes, but that is not what we were discussing.

boomzilla:

t the reward on the investment in the child is not entirely long term.

Unless we are talking about child labor then we disagree, society doesn't benefits from infants in the short term.

boomzilla:

I can't imagine what statistical proof for or against could possibly be

Perhaps, and that is why such data is needed.

boomzilla:

A lot of things fly against the basic instinct of self preservation.

Actually, no, not really.

boomzilla:

Just look at any blakeyrant. That sort of rage in anyone can't be good for your health.

Hmmm, perhaps not for an isolated individual, however I suspect that most of blakeyrat's rage is drama so his health should be ok.

boomzilla:

I'm a person. I judge things. And people.

I prefer to understand than to judge. I see no gain in judging, moreover when in most cases is wrong.

boomzilla:

I don't apologize for thinking that some cultures / civilizations / behaviors are superior to others.

And you shouldn't, not to me or anybody, that is common human behavior, flawed but understandable.

boomzilla:

I can't explain your inability to do so.

I can't either, sorry, to me most humans are like a puzzle, taking them apart to see what makes them tick is vastly entertaining but I don't judge them nor consider them horrible or great. Perhaps it stems from what a doctor called acute uneven intelligence

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

No, I'm saying that most (if any) humans are not rational so their aswer would differ from a rational response, which is quantifiable, this is why predicting individual human behavior is really hard.

boomzilla:

TDEMSYR

Why? What do you understand by reward? Are you talking about emotional fulfilment as a parent or something like that?, because I made clear I was refering to the net benefit of society as whole as you can probably read in the original post. Other than that I don't see what you are refering to, perhaps you should elaborate and not recur to mildly obscure acronyms.

boomzilla:

Given where you claim to live, that's probably for the best (for you).

Where do I claim I live? I have never actually discussed my nationality (another concept I always had a hard time grasping) however I do agree that society or at least the members of it in your circle do influence our ways of thinking but you seem to imply that there is some benefit for me in my current situation, however my way of thinking is not widespread where I live at least not openly although I agree that the way things are in my country could make most of my countrymen more pragmatic than the norm, this is of course a speculation because there is no hard data available and I'm not sure how much polling would help as humans tend to lie to conform to what they think is the more moral answer instead of answering truthfully

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

I'm not a native english speaker so I'm not 100% how valid your post is.

Then let me explain.

The idea of a purpose, strictly speaking, only applies to systems capable of adopting an intentional stance i.e. forming a goal and choosing ways to work toward it. Any such system will display some degree of consciousness.

Many systems produce behaviours onto which people, when thinking and talking about those behaviours, sometimes map an intentional stance where no such stance actually exists. For example, a falling rock is clearly not capable of adopting an intentional stance, but it sounds only slightly weird to speak of it as "wanting to" minimize its gravitational potential energy or that its "purpose in falling" is to minimize its gravitational potential energy. The word "purpose" here is being applied metaphorically.

The more complex the range of behaviours that a particular system can display, the less forced and unnatural it will seem to speak of its goals and purposes, even though it falls well short of being capable of adopting an actual intentional stance. Most people will happily agree that the purpose of living things is to reproduce themselves, though this is in fact every bit as metaphorical an application of the word "purpose" as in the case of the falling rock.

Now, some particular living thing might well be capable of forming an intentional stance on reproduction, and deliberately set about attempting to do so; in this case, the purpose of those particular attempts is reproduction and "purpose" is being used here in its true, not metaphorical, sense. However, life as a whole is not a conscious entity, is not capable of adopting an intentional stance, and the "purpose" that living things generally display in self-reproduction is metaphorical.

Then there's another sense of "purpose" inherent in ethics and morality, which is bound up in the systems of values that provide the ethical and moral reasons why we make the choices we do. For example: as a lifeform, my "purpose" (metaphorically speaking) might well be to reproduce; as a human being in a world of six billion, my purpose (non-metaphorically speaking, no scare quotes required) in getting a vasectomy was to avoid adding my own offspring to a world already, in my estimation, thoroughly overpopulated; my purpose in choosing to be a foster parent was to provide a safe, loving and nurturing environment for children in need of one to grow up in. Note particularly that the first of these three purposes - the metaphorical one - has no moral or ethical aspect whatsoever; the second and third certainly do.

Conflating all these different senses of the idea of "purpose", and using that conflation to make true statements about one aspect of the idea appear to support quite unrelated arguments about its other aspects, is a slick rhetorical move beloved of Internet trolls and sloppy thinkers generally. In this particular case I thought I'd be charitable and read it as trolling; hence the golf clap.

Re: Feedback

As parents, my wife and I are bear much more responsibility for the safety of our children than for each other's safety. Therefore, if either of us were ever put in the position of needing to choose between saving our child or saving the other, we would each be ethically bound to try to save the child. I see no moral difficulty here at all.

Re: Feedback

No, I'm saying that most (if any) humans are not rational so their aswer would differ from a rational response, which is quantifiable, this is why predicting individual human behavior is really hard.

Their reasoning might differ. It might not. Ditto with the response.

serguey123:

Why? What do you understand by reward? Are you talking about emotional fulfilment as a parent or something like that?, because I made clear I was refering to the net benefit of society as whole as you can probably read in the original post. Other than that I don't see what you are refering to, perhaps you should elaborate and not recur to mildly obscure acronyms.

I would differ with you on the societal benefit, too. As I said before, you didn't show your work, and I think I disagree with at least a few of your assumptions.

serguey123:

Where do I claim I live? I have never actually discussed my nationality (another concept I always had a hard time grasping)

Seriously? You can't grasp the concept of nationality. But yes, you've given hints that you live in Cuba (the currency thing being the biggest). No one knows where you actually live.

serguey123:

I do agree that society or at least the members of it in your circle do influence our ways of thinking but you seem to imply that there is some benefit for me in my current situation, however my way of thinking is not widespread where I live at least not openly although I agree that the way things are in my country could make most of my countrymen more pragmatic than the norm, this is of course a speculation because there is no hard data available and I'm not sure how much polling would help as humans tend to lie to conform to what they think is the more moral answer instead of answering truthfully

This is quite a thing to try to read. I'll explain myself a bit more. If you live in a place like Cuba or (worse) North Korea, there's all sorts of horrible things done to the populace (sure, bad things happen everywhere, but if you try moral equivalence with those two, you're just making a fool of yourself, and if you're really there, you probably don't have a choice anyways). Survival in that kind of environment seems to require people to suppress normal emotions and reactions. If you suppress the natural act of judging something to be good or bad, it's easier to accept someone else's assertion about what's right and wrong.

I recently read a book about North Korean defectors. One of the passages that really stuck with me was one lady, recounting a conversation she had with another woman during the famine in the 90s was how the woman was glad that her kids were dead, since it meant fewer mouths to have to feed. This is understandable given the circumstances, but no less horrifying for the clarifying context.

Re: Feedback

Right of the bat let me thank you for providing an interesting post, it is indeed enlightening to read how different the same word comes accross in my language, saying "the purpose of a rock" would be entirely nonsensical to me, however I did understand what he was aiming at, so caveat lector, again :)

flabdablet:

Then there's another sense of "purpose" inherent in ethics and morality, which is bound up in the systems of values that provide the ethical and moral reasons why we make the choices we do.

However moral and ethics don't exist in a vacuum, they are shaped by society itself and society is shaped by a number of reasons including survival.

flabdablet:

As parents, my wife and I are bear much more responsibility for the safety of our children than for each other's safety

That is not rational.

flabdablet:

, we would each be ethically bound to try to save the child.

But not each other?

flabdablet:

I see no moral difficulty here at all.

I just dont see moral at all.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

As parents, my wife and I are bear much more responsibility for the safety of our children than for each other's safety

That is not rational.

What's not rational about it? The implication of your response appears to be that, rationally, a person has an equal responsibility for the safety of all other people. Or perhaps that the responsibility is undefined? Are you confusing reason with nihilism?

Re: Feedback

Ohh, so we agree on that, certain randomness is to be expected, however I would love to see compiled data on response, It would clear the issue considerably.

boomzilla:

I would differ with you on the societal benefit, too.

Ok.. what are the benefit?

boomzilla:

I think I disagree with at least a few of your assumptions.

That is ok, and perfectly understandable, without disagrement there would not be progress. However I would like for you to point them so I can correct them if they are wrong or try to explain them better.

boomzilla:

Seriously? You can't grasp the concept of nationality

More to the point I don't see why humans care about such a triffle matter nowadays, however I do understand its anthropological and evolutionary importance.

boomzilla:

But yes, you've given hints that you live in Cuba (the currency thing being the biggest). No one knows where you actually live.

That guess is as good as any although is not the first time it has been proponed, the only reason I never put a nationality is because I don't believe it to matter in the grand scheme of things.

boomzilla:

If you live in a place like Cuba or (worse) North Korea, there's all sorts of horrible things done to the populace

Care to provide recent provable examples, for Cuba at least?

boomzilla:

Survival in that kind of environment seems to require people to suppress normal emotions and reaction

How very "1984". As I mentioned before, in my case, as I mentioned before, it is slightly different but it could be true in a broader sense, however I would posit that that response would be normal for that environment.

boomzilla:

If you suppress the natural act of judging something to be good or bad, it's easier to accept someone else's assertion about what's right and wrong.

In a general case, maybe, however if I can't judge something bad or good it is also imposible to accept the judgement of others so this doesn't make sense.

boomzilla:

I recently read a book about North Korean defectors.

Great, I hope you enjoyed it, however even if the content of it is true, it is anecdotal evidence at most.

boomzilla:

What's not rational about it?

Putting more value in another life than yours, except in extreme circunstances, saving yourself should be imperative.

boomzilla:

The implication of your response appears to be that, rationally, a person has an equal responsibility for the safety of all other people.

Have you read Asimov? Remember the Three laws of Robotics and how at some point one of the characters said that a robot behavior was exactly the same as the one of a good person. There is some thruth to that but humans are not inherently good or bad.

boomzilla:

Or perhaps that the responsibility is undefined?

Well, I would say that varies according to society and time.

boomzilla:

Are you confusing reason with nihilism?

I'm not sure I'm, however I read the wiki page on moral nihilism and some of its ideas are certainly interesting.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Starting and being responsible for a family can be an incredible force for civilizing young males. Not all of this comes from within the young male, of course, but it certainly can. It gives him an incentive to be productive and to keep out of trouble.

serguey123:

boomzilla:

I think I disagree with at least a few of your assumptions.

That is ok, and perfectly understandable, without disagrement there would not be progress. However I would like for you to point them so I can correct them if they are wrong or try to explain them better.

The benefits of children was probably the biggest. But it's hard to disagree with a vague promise of reasoning that seems to shift because it's never been revealed.

serguey123:

the only reason I never put a nationality is because I don't believe it to matter in the grand scheme of things.

Indeed. The "grand scheme of things." In the long run, we're all dead, so fuck it.

serguey123:

boomzilla:

What's not rational about it?

Putting more value in another life than yours, except in extreme circunstances, saving yourself should be imperative.

OK. That's not what this was really about: it was about choosing between two other lives, i.e., choosing to save the child over saving the mother. I think you got diverted by the talk about what the mom would want. But I suppose we've already established that you don't consider a parent to have much responsibility with respect to the child.

Re: Feedback

As parents, my wife and I are bear much more responsibility for the safety of our children than for each other's safety. Therefore, if either of us were ever put in the position of needing to choose between saving our child or saving the other, we would each be ethically bound to try to save the child. I see no moral difficulty here at all.

Indeed. That's what I was thinking. I suspect that the people who have said "save the mother" do not have children. To make this concrete, I know someone who was in a car accident with her 10 year old daughter, and the daughter died. I know for a fact that the mother would not hesitate to swap places if she could have. I also have a cousin who just this week found her 6-week-old daughter dead, probably of SIDS, in the crib. I won't be so heartless to ask her so soon but I'd bet she would as well.
Here is an aphorism that I think helps clarify the general sentiment: "It is a terrible thing to outlive a child." There is no aphorism that runs the other way.

Re: Feedback

I suspect that the people who have said "save the mother" do not have children

And people that say save the children do not have mothers?

FrostCat:

I know for a fact that the mother would not hesitate to swap places if she could have.

How do you know this "for a fact"?, brain scan while asking this questions? Alternate reality simulation? As I said before people lie to conform to what is accepted as the social standard, sometimes even without realizing it. Several studies do confirm this.

FrostCat:

I won't be so heartless to ask her so soon but I'd bet she would as well.

By the time you ask her it would not only be inaccurate but stale data, so don't bother.

FrostCat:

Here is an aphorism that I think helps clarify the general sentiment: "It is a terrible thing to outlive a child."

General sentiment and fact are different things.

FrostCat:

There is no aphorism that runs the other way.

There should be, growing without a parent is no walk in the park.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Starting and being responsible for a family can be an incredible force for civilizing young males.

And females as well, or do you consider women more civilized?

boomzilla:

Not all of this comes from within the young male, of course, but it certainly can. It gives him an incentive to be productive and to keep out of trouble.

Do you have statistics that prove this, humans with child are less likely to commit crimes or work? I do get the incentive part but it is more complicated than that. I would say that having a child also strain family economy so it might prompt criminal response such as the one you cited from North Korea.

boomzilla:

Indeed. The "grand scheme of things." In the long run, we're all dead, so fuck it.

Well, we will be dead, that is why we should concern ourselves with more important stuff not something as petty as the piece of land you were born or raised, are you one of those persons that takes pride in being from a given country or something like that?

boomzilla:

OK. That's not what this was really about: it was about choosing between two other lives, i.e., choosing to save the child over saving the mother. I think you got diverted by the talk about what the mom would want.

Ohh, perhaps you are right, it is hard to follow on so many posts sometimes, however I did say what I considered as rational choices in previous posts taking into account how difficult would be to save each one and secure your own survival, of course a very simplistic analysis.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Starting and being responsible for a family can be an incredible force for civilizing young males.

And females as well, or do you consider women more civilized?

Do you know any people?

serguey123:

boomzilla:

Not all of this comes from within the young male, of course, but it certainly can. It gives him an incentive to be productive and to keep out of trouble.

Do you have statistics that prove this, humans with child are less likely to commit crimes or work? I do get the incentive part but it is more complicated than that. I would say that having a child also strain family economy so it might prompt criminal response such as the one you cited from North Korea.

I get that you can't simply admit that you were maybe wrong. And that you have to have some statistics with a small P-Value before you believe something. I never said anything about a criminal response in North Korea (I didn't give full context, but her children simply died from the famine...though I wouldn't disagree that what the DPRK regime does on a daily basis should be criminal).

Or maybe you just live in a place that's too fucked up for people to be able to go out and get a job to be able to support their kids. I guess you could come up with minor exceptions (like turning to crime, which happens, but is generally pretty rare) and hide behind demands for data.

Re: Feedback

Why not? I'll admit that I though that she did something to her kids, my bad, I shouldn't have guessed

boomzilla:

that you have to have some statistics with a small P-Value before you believe something.

Well, I like facts rather than preconceptions and knee jerk reactions and believe that disscussing this type of things is beneficial.

boomzilla:

I wouldn't disagree that what the DPRK regime does on a daily basis should be criminal

It is interesting how context can change how we view things like that. I prefer a more clinical aproach to it in order to understand it.

boomzilla:

maybe you just live in a place that's too fucked up for people to be able to go out and get a job to be able to support their kids.

Ohh, they can certainly support their kids for the most part but most of them in order to provide the best care possible have to use methods not entirely legal so they might not live to the high moral standards that people with more resources can afford. As is I don't see anything wrong with it per se but I do agree that the legal mind might differ.

boomzilla:

I guess you could come up with minor exceptions (like turning to crime, which happens, but is generally pretty rare) and hide behind demands for data.

It is your asumption, so it is up to you to defend it, I just merely provided an example of how childs can also have a negative influence in adults and society instead of a "reforming one" which is your proposition, also wheter this is a minor occurrence in the world at large is disputable as well, remember that the world is a fucked up place and most humans live in the most fucked up parts of it.

boomzilla:

Do you know any people?

Depends on how do you define that, I'm certainly not a people's person nor do I have many close friends (4 of them) however I'm versed enough in social platitudes to fake it.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Re: Feedback

As parents, my wife and I are bear much more responsibility for the safety of our children than for each other's safety

That is not rational.

That's true; it's an ethical axiom, a statement of the values upon which the ethical reasoning I then present is based. Your own values may of course differ, which would mean that even if each of us were to reason absolutely flawlessly we would most likely reach different conclusions because we're starting with different premises.

serguey123:

flabdablet:

, we would each be ethically bound to try to save the child.

But not each other?

The dilemma as posited makes it pretty clear that saving the child implicitly involves failure to save the partner. If that is the case, then my ethical obligation is quite clearly to save the person for whose safety I have the greater responsibility.

serguey123:

flabdablet:

I see no moral difficulty here at all.

I just dont see moral at all.

Do you mean in this particular instance, in which case I hope this comment has clarified things for you, or in general, in which case all I can do is wish you well and hope for your continued ethical and intellectual growth?

Re: Feedback

I suspect that the people who have said "save the mother" do not have children

And people that say save the children do not have mothers?

The way your comments run seems to imply that you believe that the right thing to do must be to save the person you should care about more, and that this is undefinable because there is endless argument to be had on caring more about wife than child or vice versa. But this ignores the whole issue of parental responsibility, which is not only central to the ethical argument but self-evident to every other parent I know. You also seem to be skirting the ethical question about what should be done by requesting statistical data on what probably would be done.

Re: Feedback

What puzzles me most about these things is how well they work on some employees. The attitude seems to be "Oh WOW! FREE PIZZA!", and a genuine opinion that the company is being generous.

I get this attitude in places like call centres, where pay isn't great, and time to socialise at work is rare, but seeing highly paid contractors react like that is odd. Free pizza during your normal lunch break just shouldn't be that exciting when most of you are getting paid 5-10x what the pizza cost for your time eating it.

Indeed. Of course, a few days ago 3 highly paid FTEs were on massive amounts of unpaid overtime to resolve a management frakup, and since we all lacked purchasing cards, we essentially went to the director and TOLD HIM we were going to reimburse us for pizza and wings. To his credit, he agreed. Dropping $15 on two Little Ceasars pizza and some wings (without even paying people to eat it - we don't get paid for overtime!) has apparently caused a rather serious political incident

Of course, we also had to plead directly to the Executive vice president to get upgraded from 19" non-widescreen LCDs paired with 15" laptop screens, and to get new laptops. We're now each running single salesgoon-spec LCDs. 24", cheap as hell. Actual salesgoons have FOUR paired with our laptops (except for the handful of us who straight refused to hand over the 19" screens to the IT guy when he came to collect them - he was just going to dump them in the skip, and I wasn't going to let go of the opportunity for useful dual monitor actio. Proper laptops are "on order". This is despite the well-documented benefits to effectively giving developers whatever hardware they want, and not using the crap laptop-in-docking-station model.

Oh, and we do color-correct print work. It's apparently much cheaper to spend production time, waste pallets of paper, and miss SLAs because "the color isn't quite right!!!!" than to buy $700+ color-correct monitors of appropriate size.

Re: Feedback

I suspect that the people who have said "save the mother" do not have children

And people that say save the children do not have mothers?

The way your comments run seems to imply that you believe that the right thing to do must be to save the person you should care about more, and that this is undefinable because there is endless argument to be had on caring more about wife than child or vice versa. But this ignores the whole issue of parental responsibility, which is not only central to the ethical argument but self-evident to every other parent I know. You also seem to be skirting the ethical question about what should be done by requesting statistical data on what probably would be done.

Obviously he is sick and tired of his wife and if she would die in a car crash, he would save his child and update to a more recent model wife.

Re: Feedback

I suspect that the people who have said "save the mother" do not have children

And people that say save the children do not have mothers?

The way your comments run seems to imply that you believe that the right thing to do must be to save the person you should care about more, and that this is undefinable because there is endless argument to be had on caring more about wife than child or vice versa. But this ignores the whole issue of parental responsibility, which is not only central to the ethical argument but self-evident to every other parent I know. You also seem to be skirting the ethical question about what should be done by requesting statistical data on what probably would be done.

Obviously he is sick and tired of his wife and if she would die in a car crash, he would save his child and update to a more recent model wife.

On a sidenote, I had to wait hours at a bar in front of the store for her to finish a shoping spree, is there a model that you can recommend without that flaw?

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

it's an ethical axiom, a statement of the values upon which the ethical reasoning I then present is based

And that is why I'm trying to reduce to a simpler problem where neither morality nor ethics have meaning and only raw value is present.

flabdablet:

Your own values may of course differ

Perhaps, but if we use a large enough population we might standarize the values.

flabdablet:

we would most likely reach different conclusions

I didn't say there was one correct answer, only that there was an answer that was more likely than others for all variations,
and I concluded that that was the right one or the more common one if you like.

flabdablet:

The dilemma as posited makes it pretty clear that saving the child implicitly involves failure to save the partne

Yes, you have to chose one, abstaining to do so is not an answer either.

flabdablet:

then my ethical obligation is quite clearly to save the person for whose safety I have the greater responsibility.

But that is your own personal answer, valid only for your current society and that is not what I was talking about.

flabdablet:

Do you mean in this particular instance, in which case I hope this comment has clarified things for you, or in general, in which case all I can do is wish you well and hope for your continued ethical and intellectual growth?

A moral or ethical answer is easy, just go with the flow, I was hoping for more.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Wait... do you think that parental responsability is somehow ingrained in humans? How much do care for your offpring and what caring for it entails varies wildly in different cultures
accross different times.

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

Wait... do you think that parental responsability is somehow ingrained in humans? How much do care for your offpring and what caring for it entails varies wildly in different cultures accross different times.

So, your theory is that a species that produces helpless offspring has managed to thrive only by developing a culture to take care of children? You've never come across as particularly stupid, so, yeah, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here about being a tiresome troll.

Re: Feedback

So, your theory is that a species that produces helpless offspring has managed to thrive only by developing a culture to take care of children?

Only? No, I never said that, but you yourself pointed out children's effect on society, and heck the only thing that we were better at that other hominids that we compited against was society, so it was a factor to say the least, see Neardenthals for example, in many ways they were better than us but they matured at 15, we didn't, the rest is history (we had sex with them and then proceeded to murder every last one of them). A simpler example, do you care for your children in the same way that your granparents did? Do you? Probably no, this changes as society evolves and it is different for different societies, is this that hard to comprehend? So pretending than caring for your children more than for your wife is an universal truth or that is the better ethical choice without regard to the particulars involving what the society you live in values more is childish if not outright dumb

boomzilla:

You've never come across as particularly stupid

Stupidity is relative

boomzilla:

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here about being a tiresome troll.

I did say in a pr... this is getting tiresome if not trollish

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

So, your theory is that a species that produces helpless offspring has managed to thrive only by developing a culture to take care of children?

Only? No, I never said that, but you yourself pointed out children's effect on society, and heck the only thing that we were better at that other hominids that we compited against was society, so it was a factor to say the least, see Neardenthals for example, in many ways they were better than us but they matured at 15, we didn't, the rest is history (we had sex with them and then proceeded to murder every last one of them). A simpler example, do you care for your children in the same way that your granparents did? Do you? Probably no, this changes as society evolves and it is different for different societies, is this that hard to comprehend?

Good, now you're changing the subject. I guess that's a round about way of agreeing with me without coming out and saying so?

serguey123:

So pretending than caring for your children more than for your wife is an universal truth or that is the better ethical choice without regard to the particulars involving what the society you live in values more is childish if not outright dumb

You've got it backwards. Sure, we can always find some pedantic dickweedish scenario, but as I alluded, if you're a species with helpless offspring, and you don't make an effort to protect your offspring, you're not going to be a species for long. This is obvious to most people, and is apparently part of our biology.

Re: Feedback

How am I changing the subject? I'm just objecting to your pretense that I said that it was the only factor, because I never did and then explaining more about how they were a factor.

boomzilla:

if you're a species with helpless offspring, and you don't make an effort to protect your offspring, you're not going to be a species for long.

Didnt' I talked about this before? Are you going to make me repeat myself? Yes, humans as many others have some instinst in place to protect younglins however that doesn't mean that they were as valuables as today society deem them, that is why for example you had a bunch of them, one dies, you have another or why some where considered more valuables than others (in most cultures males were more valuable for example and females were considered a luxury only attainable if you had a male already). Anyhow, I'll be fairly busy for at least two weeks...

#100085 +(531)- [X]

<jome> I suppose there are bad coders, there are really bad coders, there are fucking retards, and there's coders writing lines like this: $resultscode = $resultscode - 0;

Re: Feedback

That's some high quality
trolling. Wow. I see how you did it. Nothing as explosive as a moral
issue, so you hop on it, make a bold statement contradiction the common
sentiment, and, bang!, you're a successful troll.

Of all
the stupid shit in his post, you single out the most reasoned part to go
into screeching flailing spittle-spewing mode over?